A user typically does not know the structure of a Web site or the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) to access specific content within the Web site. Consequently, the users will load the home page, and then navigate within the Web site by clicking hyperlinks or select a search engine option. The search engine requires that the user fill out a form with key word search terms and other criteria, or at least provide search terms into a search-specific entry field. A similar sequence of user interactions is required to initiate an LDAP directory search or a search via an Internet search engine such as “Google” (tm) program. (Google is a Trade Mark of Google Technology Inc. in the US and other countries.) The user initially loads a Web page and then fills in a form to generate an LDAP directory search request or a Google search request.
Many Internet users currently access Web sites via a conventional telephone connection or via mobile communications, which are slow. So, it is time consuming for the user to interact with remote servers and fetch web pages. Any unnecessary user interactions and web page fetches can result in significant delay in obtaining a Web page containing information of genuine interest.
It is known in conventional file transfer request processing within the World Wide Web Internet service for a Web server to check the syntax of URIs within received client requests. In the case of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests, an invalid request syntax is reported to the requesting client as an error using HTTP status code 400. URI syntax rules are set out in the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) Request for Comments 1630, Tim Berners-Lee, 1994.
Another problem with conventional access to Web sites is that a failure to find a requested page is typically reported to the user as a “document not found” error with no explanation of the specific cause of the error. In the absence of any guidance for future interactions, the user typically reloads the previously-accessed page, types a new Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into his or her Web Browser's user entry field, or gives up the search.
Another known failure scenario corresponds to failure by a receiving server to locate a requested Web page or other resource. Within conventional HTTP processing, failure to find a requested Web page is reported to the requesting client using the HTTP status code 404 (“Resource Not Found” error code). Other 4XX HTTP status codes are known for reporting apparent error conditions relating to client requests. A number of 5XX HTTP status codes are known for reporting problems where the server appears to have erred.
International Patent Application Publication No. WO 02/35387, published 2 May 2002, describes a searching procedure in which a search request string, including a valid locator (URL) for a search engine and at least one search term, is parsed and separated into a locator and a search string. The search string is then submitted to a search engine having the specified locator. Data returned from the search engine is passed back to the user and displayed. WO 02/35387 allows the user to enter search criteria in a Web Browser's entry field, but requires the user to enter a valid URL pointer to a search engine.
Subject to user preferences, it is known for an unrecognised URI or text (entered into a user entry field) to be sent by Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser to the MSN search Web site to initiate a search on the Internet. A user may set his or her preferences to specify an alternative default search service. However, the default mechanisms within the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser do not allow Web site searching to be carried out in response to search context information which is limited to specific Web sites.
The question mark symbol ‘?’ is known to delimit a boundary between a URI of a queryable object and a set of words expressing a query on that object. (The use of ‘?’ to delimit a boundary is defined in the IETF Network Working Group's Request for Comments 1630 “Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW—A Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses of Objects on the Network as used in the World-Wide Web”, Tim Berners-Lee, CERN, June 1994).
A general object of the present invention is to facilitate searches by a user, targeted to specific Web sites.